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Kickstart Project....

First week, first project. This project involved us having to respond to not only our own, new studio space, but to also respond to the ideas of those also in our studio space.

Part 1:

For the first part of this project, I decided to respond to the areas of my space where layers of paint have been building up over the months from previous inhabitants of the studio space. I was inspired by these to do the same kind of thing but on clear film/acetate and originally I was going to place it around my space and document it, but changed my mind after painting on each sheet in a different way - by flicking the paint brush to create splats of paint, using paper scrunched up, diluting paint with water and letting it drip and so on. I then held them up against the window to let the light shine through them, and I was really intrigued with how they looked against the window. It sort of resembled a stained glass window effect in a way and I liked how the paint obscured the view outside the window. I held each one up against the window and documented each one, getting up close and really focusing on getting as much detail on the painted acetate as possible. After taking loads of photographs I then went and narrowed them down to the ones I thought looked the most effective and successful, and then proceeded to enhance them in Photoshop.

 I then stuck them all over my wall, I wanted to use up as much space as I could, while also trying to align them best I could. I also hung some of the acetate from the beam across the top of my space, using wire as I hoped the light would somehow catch onto the acetate, but it didn't look nearly as effective as I had hoped, and would probably do something different or try a different way of hanging them. Also, in hindsight, and as discussed in my first tutorial, I could have experimented with how I displayed my photographs, possibly being less uniform and maybe displaying two or three. This is something that I shall definitely consider going forward as I do think that I need to improve my curation/exhibition set up skills. However, overall I was pretty pleased with how these came out, and I think I'm going to take these pieces and apply them to my main ideas for my main project.

Part 2:

For the second part of the project, I chose to respond to two ideas - theme of slavery, and the theme of colour/abstract/painting. I felt that these were sort of similar to my own ideas and thought that they would be easy to respond to. However I did struggle a lot with how I was going to approach this, and it was a lot of trial and error. I first did some image research on the two themes that I was going to respond to and decided after doing this that I would try and do an abstract painting based on slave imagery. I planned on painting hands which are chained in an abstract style. I drew it out as a plan and it looked okay, but once I started to draw it on a bigger scale, it didn't look as good as it did in my sketchbook, so I decided to scrap that idea and try something else. After doing some more research I decided on using collage on a big scale, using paint and colour, and using similar slave imagery I had used before and cut out different shapes and collaged them together. Overall it looked really good, and I was finally happy with it. I think I'm definitely going to go back to this and develop it further into a stronger response. Maybe incorporate print into it?  I was hesitant to do so in the first place as I wanted to do something out of my comfort zone, and try to embrace the practice of others, rather than going straight back to my own style of practice.

 I then decided to comeback to this piece and rework it. I cut up specific areas that I found to be successful areas, and collaged them together on a A4 piece of foam board. I chose to use the four face cutouts, and the main text - I See Humans But No Humanity - and placed this on top of the four cutouts. I felt that this represented the idea of slavery and the issue of the lack of humanity within people today. The faceless women also represent my own practice in a way as women are always seen at face value. By taking the face away you actually want to know who these women are, and they become more than just pretty objects. I prefer this piece over the first collage that I did, however I still think there's something more I could do, but at this point I'm not sure. 



Things to do next:
* develop part 2 of kick-start project - introduce print?/develop collage techniques?
* apply part 1 of project into my main ideas - obstruction of text? visuals/text? using feminist ideas?

Reworked piece on A4 foam board

First collage based on the theme of Slavery























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